Everton's fans prepared meticulously for the homecoming, buying a blow-up doll to pass across the stands and penning a new chant – "No woman, no Kai", to the old Bob Marley number – but it was their team who mastered the art of torture, scoring twice in added time to take a point off a Manchester United side that had spared Wayne Rooney the sadistic humour of the tribe he left behind.

Rooney's omission from the United squad that left the Lowry Hotel in Manchester to motor to the ground where he made his name was punishment laced with empathy. "We are not going to subject him to the abuse he gets here," said Sir Alex Ferguson before United surrendered a 3-1 lead to goals by Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta. This calculated strategy both erected a protective cordon around a troubled employee and reminded him of what he will surrender if he becomes a victim of his appetites.

In the wake of a soul-melting frenzy around his personal life, United were eager to distinguish between private morality and professional duty. There was a distinction in the club's thinking between issues pertaining to his marriage and the hedonistic streak the recent kiss-and-tell allegations pointed to. Where Rooney was failing to behave like a committed Manchester United footballer, the club felt within their rights to express fierce displeasure. Drinking, smoking and living on Las Vegas non-time would be the offences likely to compromise his work ethic.

So Ferguson played a win-win hand. Rooney had stayed with the team as usual but the manager sent him home on the morning of this most daunting return to Goodison. Hobson's choice is how Rooney probably saw it: a painful domestic inquest or a run across the minefield of Evertonian loathing. On that front United's supporters subverted the plot, taunting the home crowd with chants of "Rooney shagged your gran".

Why mention this? Because it is the context and climate in which the career of England's best player came to a 24-hour halt, the environment in which United tried to win a tough away game without him. Also it reveals how the private lives of footballers have mutated into an especially rancid type of mass entertainment; a burlesque in which the mighty are perennially tempted and then exposed and humbled when they succumb.

Rooney's demotion was a compassionate act and a memo that said great football clubs roll on without even their brightest stars. It said careers are ruined all the time and that Rooney could spoil his too. Ferguson's ace is that the man he left behind is addicted to the game, to playing, to throwing himself into combat. To have this taken from him, even for a single afternoon, might have the effect of smelling salts. Kindness was delivered with an accompanying kick.

Though United "threw away" a victory, in Ferguson's words, they also played with ease and enterprise, as if to prove they can shine without their enfant terrible and chief headline-maker. Dimitar Berbatov reached the levels of one the world's top strikers. His touch and vision were exquisite. His goal – United's third – was a masterpiece. Receiving a chip from Paul Scholes that floated over the shoulder of Sylvain Distin, Berbatov steered the ball infield to slice off the Everton defender's angle and used the outside of his right boot to drive a shot past Tim Howard, whose acrobatic leaps and blocks had kept David Moyes's team in the game.

Rooney-centric United fans will say missed opportunities proved the case for keeping him in the side regardless of the home crowd's hostility. True, Scholes skewed a chance over the bar and Nani provoked Ferguson's wrath by screwing a shot wide when team-mates were lining up to finish, but then Rooney has been no goal-machine of late.

United have been coaxing him back to peak condition after his disastrous World Cup in South Africa. Encouragingly, for Ferguson, Berbatov sensed the talent gap in United's forward line and resolved to fill it, parading the kind of conviction that was lacking in his often languid efforts last term.

Ferguson says Rooney will be back for Tuesday's Champions League tie against Rangers and the visit of Liverpool next Sunday. Away fans aside, this buys him another week inside the United compound. Sometimes the dazzling power of the modern footballer/one-man corporation conceals the might still exercised by the biggest clubs. At United, David Beckham and Roy Keane fought the law and lost.

Rooney is nowhere near that point, but can expect to hear an emphatic restatement of team principles; not in the moral sphere, but where indulgence and indiscipline threaten to inflate into self-destruction. At 24 he has received the first real intimation that all careers end, some gloriously, some with cheap blues lines filling the obituaries.

Received at first as a victory for the mob, the dropping of Rooney on this September Saturday came to be a showcase for Berbatov and a demonstration of Everton's spirit and tenacity. In other words, two clubs managed fine without him.